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Aeson -> RE: Gaming the system: Shouldn't you have to have Space Control to Invade a Planet and take everything? (8/29/2014 11:17:20 PM)
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Maybe gravity weapons could do damage to troops. Then they'd be good for temporarily stopping those transports and impacting the ground attack before it lands.
I'm under the impression that currently, if a ship carrying troops loses its troop compartment, you lose the troops. I might be mistaken, but if I'm not, then gravity weapons already have a chance of weakening an invasion force.
As far as the subject of this thread goes, it is my opinion that opposed landings where the opposing space defenses have not been neutralized, or which are not heavily outnumbered, should not be removed from the game simply because it's possible to abuse it to ridiculous levels. While I think the successful invasion with four super transports and no real fleet is ridiculous, I don't think it's worth banning everything from that to an invasion which takes place while your fleet is fighting in an attempt to gain space superiority just to fix this perceived flaw. If you don't like abusing the system to that extent, don't do it, or at least don't come to the forums with a suggestion for 'correcting' this flaw by removing any chance whatsoever of pulling anything remotely resembling this off. I shouldn't need space superiority to conduct landing operations, I just need enough of it where I can get boots on the ground, and then I need enough space forces in the area to prevent those who are willing to resort to such tactics from indiscriminately bombarding the planet (since the game doesn't allow for tactical planetary bombardment, only the kill everyone option). An invasion just needs enough fleet power to protect the transports while landing and protect the supply lines enough to keep fighting in order to be successful, it doesn't need virtual control of the surrounding space.
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And if we are talking lore, i really have a hard time getting my head around an enemy station and huge fleet becoming mine after i just conquered their homeworld. You would think for their very existence they would put up more of a fuzz.
You could explain it with extortion or this or that, but it just does not fly for me lore-wise either.
It might possibly be a 'starving them out' situation. I have no idea how large the food supplies the stations over planets would carry, but, at least for the spaceport, I doubt it's all that much, as the spaceport has a significant amount of traffic with the planet it orbits due to trade. It's not terribly likely, in my opinion, that they keep particularly large stockpiles of food on hand beyond what they expect to need to distribute to the next set of freighters that come through, and it makes little worthwhile difference to the game if the spaceport surrenders when the planet falls or a week or two later. It's also not terribly unlikely for a fortified position, once cut off from resupply, to surrender even before their supplies run out; we may remember the diehards best, but those who gave up before the sieges really got going are fairly prevalent in human history, too.
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I'm also aware that they would be hiding in schools and hospitals and deliberately using civilian shields. They would also probably be executing civilians for every soldier zapped from orbit. They would be dressing as civilians and blending in.
I disagree. ISIS is a special case, in that they are not currently a recognized nation with a reputation to maintain, and they have nothing to lose by violating the accepted laws of war - they're a rebellion, and so they're guilty of treason. Endangering and murdering civilians recklessly to protect their own forces is not likely to produce a significantly worse outcome for them should they lose, as their leadership is mostly bound for prison or the gallows anyways, and the rank and file will generally be allowed to return to whatever they were doing in civilian life anyways, perhaps with some restrictions on their rights or a bit of prison time before being released. The US cannot use its air supremacy to full effect because "civilized" nations simply don't indiscriminately bomb targets where there is a high likelihood of collateral damage, at least not in the post-WWII era, and doing so violates both the accepted rules of war and a number of treaties to which the US is a party. I expect that the future-humans of Distant Worlds have similar ethical issues with endangering civilians through this employment of soldiers and with indiscriminate bombardment of planets, and I suspect that several of the other species, especially those that fall under the "good" alignment, will have similar issues.
Moreover, at least under the current rules of war, it is illegal for soldiers to conceal themselves as civilians during combat. If your soldiers are not recognizably combatants while participating in a military action or preparing for one, then they are not protected under the Geneva Conventions regarding the treatment of prisoners of war. While there is no guarantee that there would be universal adherence to a rule of this kind between the various species and factions which exist in Distant Worlds, I would be rather surprised if at least some of them were not inclined towards this form of rule. Even if it does nothing else, it helps your own forces recognize their own. There's also little reason why, if restrictions of this nature are not adhered to, the defending side would not resort to similar tactics, beyond the pragmatic concern of avoiding friendly fire incidents and the ethical and moral concerns of endangering noncombatants, and the defending side is significantly more likely to be able to benefit from this - it would be incredibly difficult to disguise a human as a civilian giant spider when invading a Dhayut world, but the Dhayut soldiers defending the planet should have no such issues. There are something like 20 species in Distant Worlds. How many of them are morphologically similar enough to humans for it to be practical to disguise an invasion force as a not completely out of place group of civilians? How much effort would that require beyond what would be needed just for an invasion of troops in uniform? Maybe I can look like a Mortalen, but is it really worth giving enough of the invading human army cosmetic surgery or costumes to be able to hide a reasonable fraction of the invading force among the civilian population of the target world? Is it really practical to train enough of the army sufficiently in the local languages and dialects?
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